C’Mon

Hang in there Kiddo

The current “dialogue” being bandied about concerning Charlottesville and the abject failure of the goofball in chief to address it adequately speaks volumes about the intelligence of the people involved. Something that has always struck me about white supremacists is the obvious lack of a moral compass combined with an almost uniform absence of intellect. Whenever they are interviewed by the media they come across as moronic. Any time you based your judgement of people on the color of their skin you’ve surrendered the ability to think rationally. Idiocy is not the sole possession of any single “race” despite evidence to the contrary from the past weekend.

I, along with most of the rational world, was dumfounded at the complete ineptitude of the public voice of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. While you can make a case for looking at both sides of most arguments, racism is for lack of a better term one of those back and white dichotomies. It’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels that I honestly believe most people see it that way. The lunatic fringe never will, for some of the reasons I’ve ascribed to their intellectual capacity above.

Playground Gal

I remain optimistic that humanity as a whole will move on from racism. I grew up in a lily white environment. I then embarked on a military career where I was thrust into a very integrated society with African Americans sleeping inches away in a very confined environment. Over time the exotic nature of our differences were muted as we came to know each other and recognize the relative levels of worth in each other. Martin Luther King Jr. provided a mind numbing amount of profound statements on race relations but the one that has always spoken most eloquently to me was, “one day live in a nation where they (his children) will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”

Getting ready For Gramp Visit

I’m actually excited my granddaughter is growing up in a very diverse neighborhood where she can experience for herself the importance of judging not by skin color but character content. She was very charming last night on our daily Facetime call as she assisted her mother with dinner prep. She knows my wife and I are coming down for a weekend visit and promised to show me all the ins and outs of the neighborhood playgrounds. She took on a very serious and determined mien when I asked her for this.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I did see the Dark Tower on Sunday night. This is one of my favorite books (actually series of books) from the Master and I’d eagerly awaited the movie version. I understood the dilution required of reducing a multi-book, dense story into a two hour movie would require the excision of a lot of texture and that certainly happened. The story, however, still sings as Roland, the last gunfighter, tries to save the Dark Tower from the man in grey. The movie only brings in one of the Earth’s allies Roland’s picks up in his travels which was the most painful exclusion for me. Idris Elba is tone perfect as Roland. I’d heard a lot of bad things about the movie going in but I think this was a gallant attempt to tell a witheringly thick tale in the short time a movie allows. I devour all of King’s works, especially the Dark Tower series, and while this is a very pale shadow of the written word, for me it still resonated. I know this will get me in trouble with some of more fanatic fellow fans of the Master but I liked it.